Fantasmas y dobles, un capitán del ejército de Napoleón, una muerta que reclama a su amante vivo, tres hombres perseguidos por una maldición cubana, un mayordomo neoyorquino experto en venganzas, un mendigo que fue rey, un adorador voluminoso y su adorada «belleza irreal»... Javier Marías es capaz de alcanzar en sus cuentos un grado de tensión y profundidad sólo propio de los grandes maestros del género. ?A la vez clásicos y enteramente modernos, estos logradísimos cuentos imponen, sin abrumar, su placer y su diversión.?

Javier Marias is not primarily known as a writer of gothic fiction. This slender collection brings together a number of “dark tales” which he wrote over the past decades, including a number of fine ghost stories. Marias is a noted Anglophile and he tends to avoid shock and horror in favour of an elegant and understated style of narration more typical of the English ghost story tradition. The fear which haunts many of the (male) protagonists is a very “human” sense of insecurity, especially in their relationship with women – tellingly, the narrators of two of the stories face an identity crisis after they meet their doppelgänger. In this light, the title of the book assumes a metaphorical significance. An interesting modern take on an established genre. ( )

Fantasmas y "dobles", un capital del ejército de Napoleón, una muerta que reclama a su amante vivo, tres hombres perseguidos por una maldición cubana, un mayordomo neoyorquino experto en venganzas, un mendigo que fue rey, un adorador voluminoso y us adorada "belleza irreal"... Javier Marías es capaz de alcanzar en sus cuentos un grado de tensión y profundidad sólo propio de los 1grandes maestros del género.

Javier Marias is not primarily known as a writer of gothic fiction. This slender collection brings together a number of “dark tales” which he wrote over the past decades, including a number of fine ghost stories. Marias is a noted Anglophile and he tends to avoid shock and horror in favour of an elegant and understated style of narration more typical of the English ghost story tradition. The fear which haunts many of the (male) protagonists is a very “human” sense of insecurity, especially in their relationship with women – tellingly, the narrators of two of the stories face an identity crisis after they meet their doppelgänger. In this light, the title of the book assumes a metaphorical significance. An interesting modern take on an established genre. ( )

In which I learn, definitively, that Marias is a novelist, one of the best alive, and can't write short stories to save his life. The title story is excellent; the very nice, well worked out conceit (man films his out-of-his-league girlfriend constantly, the narrator tries to work out why) lets Marias use the same tricks and skills he uses in his novels. The others feature rather too many doppelgangers and ghosts for my taste and, I assume, for the taste of anyone who made it out of the eighties alive, and it isn't clear to me if I mean the pomo 1980s, or the Henry Jamesian 1880s. The point is, the other stories are obviously squibs, and only for Marias completists. Of which I am one. ( )